


Reflection

by athena_crikey



Series: Sleeper, Slayer, Scholar [4]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Attraction, Drama, Gen, Team-fic, Trevor can't make up his mind, Vignette, slight gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 04:58:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13474179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: “Ironic, isn’t it? Three outcasts from society are its only chance of salvation.”





	Reflection

They push west on a rumour, a whispered conversation that Dracula’s castle was seen near Arges, Wallachia’s former capital and once a great city. Now, like the rest of the country, it has been reduced to charred ruins and the river it sits upon runs red with blood. 

As with Gresit before it, the residents of the city are putting up a lingering defense – not out of hope but grim necessity. The people withdraw nightly into the catacombs beneath the town and sit in the fetid water in silence, torches ready but unlit to better see the night demons’ glowing eyes. There is no longer any differentiation between man and woman, elder and child: all take their turns at the pikes, ready to spear any demon who ventures down after them. 

In the day the city reeks of gore and sewage; blue flies infest the lanes and squares, laying eggs that hatch into wriggling white maggots in the flesh of the dead. Foxes and wolves, sensing the fall of the city, have moved in to prey on the piled corpses. 

“They’re getting bold,” remarks Trevor as they skirt a vixen chewing on dripping entrails; she lowers her head and growls at them, but does not relinquish her ground. 

“It’s as though they’ve been waiting to feast on our downfall.” Sypha shudders, brushing a stray lock of hair from her face. 

Adrian considers the vixen for a moment before continuing on, his long jacket waving in the gentle breeze. “The presence of the unholy always alters the balance of nature. Man, so favoured currently, only stands to lose.”

Trevor shrugs. “Perhaps we deserve it.”

Adrian stares back evenly. “Perhaps you do.” There is no malice in his tone, just simple consideration. “My mother taught me of the good in humanity – the charity and the decency and the capacity to love. She wanted me to see the best in her people. My father allowed it, but the castle was a lesson in and of itself. The fields of skeletons beyond the gates, the dungeons with their rank cells, the library full not only of wisdom and learning but hatred and ignorance and petulance.” 

Trevor spits on a passing rat. “We are what we are – good and evil bound together, each of us with a fair measure of both. I stopped believing in saints a long time ago.” 

“Do you believe the razing of a country is a fair price to pay for the death of one woman?” asks Sypha, frowning. Trevor looks down at her wearily, already tired by this conversation. 

“If I did, I wouldn’t be here.”

  
***

Trevor’s surprised there’s any beer left in the town – had he been left alone in the tavern for the 10 days that have passed since the anniversary of Lisa Tepes’ death in Targoviste, the barrels would certainly been empty.

The three of them sit together in the corner of the tavern while around them scared people hurry to eat, swallowing scraps of mouldy bread and dried meat. There’s been no cooking or baking since the night hordes overtook the land and the city would have soon run out of what stores of food it had if the demons hadn’t been considerate enough to slaughter the majority of its inhabitants.

Trevor chugs back his beer while Sypha sips at hers anemically; Adrian sits with only empty table in front of him. Trevor can picture him drinking wine – red, of course – from a delicate glass, long fingers cradling the crystal stem. The dregs of sour beer from old beer kegs in a dirty tavern are far beneath him. 

Despite not having supped, it is Adrian who pays for the meal. Trevor is officially penniless, having spent his last coin in Gresit. Adrian steps forward to pay before Sypha can produce any money from beneath her cloak, acting presumably from some lingering sense of chivalry. 

Chivalry engrained in him by the man – the monster – who set the night hordes on Wallachia. 

As they eat, Trevor is aware of another table of men sitting nearby watching them, their eyes narrowed and dark. They’re big, hairy, over-muscled types, the kind who prefer brawn to brains. Sypha is also aware of their gaze; although she sits with her back to them, she keeps straightening and half-glancing backwards. Adrian can hardly be any less aware but he makes no sign to acknowledge their gaze, just sits still with one leg crossed over the other, the tails of his long coat pooling on the floor. 

It’s not until they finish their meal and make to stand that the other shoe drops. The four men at the other table all stand as one, the biggest leading the way over. “We’ve been watching you,” he rumbles, spreading his look evenly over the three of them.

“That’s flattering, but you’re not my type,” replies Trevor. His cloak, he knows without looking, is draped over his chest, hiding the Belmont family crest. Whatever these thugs want, it’s nothing to do with his family – for once. 

The rest of the tavern has gone silent; Trevor can hear the low shift of Sypha’s robe as she tenses beside him. There’s the very real possibility that this town is just as prejudiced against Speakers as Gresit, that the men are here to purge the last speaker in the west. 

The mountainous man ignores both him and Sypha and looks instead to Adrian. “I know you. Alucard, son of Dracula. Here to get in a few laughs before the demons tear us all apart?”

Adrian looks up at him without moving one inch, still as steel. “Dracula’s intentions are not mine. I stand against him.” 

A second man, this one with a prickling mat of hair crowning his head, gives one short bark of laughter. “Right, a hell spawn with a soft spot.”

“Walk away,” Adrian advises them. By the door, two women and an old man slip quietly out, fleeing the scene – or going to fetch the remainder of the town. A bar fight, Trevor can handle; that’s something he excels at. A mob is another story. 

“Where to?” demands the front-most man, and launches forward with a right hook. Adrian dodges it with the ease of a falcon darting around a stationary turret, and lands his own blow in the centre of the man’s stomach. The thug groans and falls to the ground vomiting up the beer he was just drinking. 

Now the other three are running forward; Trevor steps forward and catches the forearm of one, swinging him around straight into a wooden pillar supporting the roof. The whole room shakes as he goes down like a stunned rhino. Sypha blasts another out through a window with a sudden gale summoned out of nowhere. 

Adrian takes the last without pause or concern, flowing gracefully past his bull-like charge and whirling around to deliver a roundhouse kick to his back so hard he rolls out the front door, his chin digging a trench in the mud beyond. 

There’s a metallic rattling; the man behind the bar has drawn a sword. On the other side of the room the remaining two customers are standing, weapons in hand. 

“We’re leaving,” says Adrian, his gold eyes skating once around the room. 

They walk out in silence, past the heaped body of Adrian’s second attacker, and into the street. There’s no sign of a mob; Trevor untenses slightly. 

“Where now?” asks Sypha, staring down at the grunt. 

“I think we’ve worn out our welcome here,” replies Adrian, looking around at the empty square. The pale sunlight glints off his fair hair, sleek as spun gold. Beside him Sypha nods once, curtly. 

They all of them know what it feels like to bear the brunt of public hatred. 

Trevor gives a humourless grin as they stalk across the square towards the western edge of the city and the gate that leads out into the forested land beyond. “Ironic, isn’t it? Three outcasts from society are its only chance of salvation.”

Sypha and Adrian both glance at him for a moment, but neither answers.

  
***

They stop for the evening in a small cottage on the outskirts of Arges. Trevor and Sypha sit on a rough bench peeling the mould off the corners of a piece of cheese and slicing up dried meat. For once Adrian is the distracted one, standing off to one side and tapping his finger absently against his forearm while he looks out the window at the setting sun.

“Getting cold feet?” asks Trevor as he stuffs a piece of meat in his mouth. Adrian gives him a deeply unimpressed look (Sypha gives him a disgusted one). 

“I wish I could say there was something redeemable about your crassness,” replies Adrian. “Unfortunately, it is simply vulgar.” 

Trevor raises an eyebrow. “And here I always thought it was one of my best features.”

Adrian turns away, looking out the window again. 

“What are you watching for?” Sypha lowers the short dagger she has been using to shave the cheese into her lap and shakes the mouldy pieces from the folds of her robe. 

“I’m not used to being recognized. It has been so long since I was abroad in Wallachia.” 

“The teeth are a bit of a giveaway, Adrian,” says Trevor, tapping his own incisors with the point of a finger. 

Adrian turns, eyes flashing. “Why do you call me that?” he asks, stepping over towards the bench. Trevor frowns. 

“It’s your name. Isn’t it?”

“The Wallachians call me Alucard. You are a Wallachian.”

“Not a very fine example of one, according to the Church.” He sighs. “Look, call yourself whatever you want. It just seemed to me that you’d rather be more than a reflection of your father. You _are_ more than that,” he adds, offhand. 

The comment stops Adrian short. “That’s an unusual thought.”

Trevor shrugs. “I’m an unusual man. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

For a moment there’s nothing but silence, the two of them looking at one another like a pair of dogs sizing each other up. Then Sypha gives a little snuffle of laughter; both Trevor and Adrian look at her. 

“Your faces. So serious.” She slices up the cheese deftly and hands a piece to Trevor, then to Adrian. “Here. Eat. Then we go – out of the city before night falls and the demons come.”

Adrian frowns. “If it weren’t for me, you could have spent the night here in the catacombs.”

Sypha shakes her head. “Trevor is right. We are none of us welcome. It’s not just you.” 

“Besides, I’d rather be out in the open air than knee-deep in shit,” adds Trevor. “There’s nothing in Arges for us.”

When they leave it is silently, closing the door behind them to the empty cottage and crossing the still streets without a word. And if they each walk closer to the next, none of them comments on it.


End file.
